1922

Just received a pitiful letter from a young pastor who is losing his church because he has been “too liberal.” I suppose there are churches which will crucify a leader who tries to lead them into the modern world of thought and life. Yet here I have been all these years in a conservative communion and have never had a squabble about theology. I suppose that is partly due to the fact that there were so few people here when I came that no one had to listen to me if he didn’t like my approach. Those who have come have associated themselves with us because they were in general agreement with “our gospel.” They have come, however, from conservative communions and churches. But of course they have been mostly young people.

If preachers get into trouble in pursuance of their task of reinterpreting religious affirmations in the light of modern knowledge I think it must be partly because they beat their drums too loudly when they make their retreats from untenable positions of ancient orthodoxy. The correct strategy is to advance at the center with beating drums and let your retreats at the wings follow as a matter of course and in the interest of the central strategy. You must be honest, of course, but you might just as well straighten and shorten your lines without mock heroics and a fanfare of trumpets.

The beauty of this strategy is that there is enough power at the center for a real advance and enough opposition for a real conflict. If you set the message of a gospel of love against a society enmeshed in hatreds and bigotries and engulfed in greed, you have a real but not necessarily a futile conflict on your hands. There is enough natural grace in the human heart to respond to the challenge of the real message in the gospel—and enough original sin in human nature to create opposition to it. The sorriest preachers are those who preach a conventional morality while they try to be intellectually and theologically radical.

Men will not make great intellectual readjustments for a gospel which does not greatly matter. If there is real adventure at the center of the line the reserves are drawn from the wings almost unconsciously.